thoughts (and links) of a retired "social scientist" as he tries to make sense of the world.....

what you get here

This is not a blog which expresses instant opinions on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers as jumping-off points for some reflections about our social endeavours.

Romanian
politicians don’t do resignations. When, a few years back, one of their
previous Ministers who had migrated to Brussels as a Euro MP was one of three
Euro MPs to be caught in a sting, the other two quickly resigned but not Romanian
Adrian Severin…..

When Victor
Ponta became Romania’s Prime Minister some 4 years ago, he was almost
immediately discovered by a global scientific journal to have committed
extensive plagiarism for his PhD. He shrugged that off – although it had
immediately led to resignations of German and other national Ministers guilty
of such transgressions. But not in Romania…..Even being indicted by the
country’s powerful anti-corruption brigade (DNA) didn’t seem to rattle
him – only one of the charges would have been liable to remove him.

But Ponta duly went (pushed it appears) in
November 2015 as public anger at political shamelessness reached boiling point
- first from the death of a police outrider escorting a Ministry of Interior’s
car which had no right for such protection but then, at the weekend, from
almost 50 deaths in a night-club which, like all such places in the country,
had absolutely no fire or safety precautions……The “Sarah in Romania” blog can
always be relied upon for a caustic comment on such matters – ….

This time their seems some focus for policy change to the
anger….the country now has a President (Klaus Johannis) who has used at least
the language of radical change - although the jury must remain out on whether
he has the capacity to deliver. And the street protests - which were normally
led by a party political element - look this time to have a slightly more hopeful
base in the citizens……but so-called “civil society” (about which one does not
hear so much these days) has never really taken off in Romania – despite the
extensive funding it got from external sources…..

Despite my
own social democratic credentials, I have never been a fan of the Romanian PSD
party which, for me, immediately absorbed the Ceaucescu lineage into a
distinctive soup of social democratic rhetoric and finance capitalist reality.
Tom Gallagher expressed it best when he used “Theft of a State” as the title of
his book on post 1989 politics in the country.

The most
physical expression you can find of the extent to which the apparatchiks still
have their claws in everything is by checking in each city you visit the large mansions in prime areas which have the various party insignia designating them
as party possessions…..

Hundreds of
politicians are now in jail and it is entirely significant that the current PDS
leader is on a 2-year suspended prison sentence for electoral fraud – occurred when
the party tried to impeach the country’s President…..With considerable reluctance, he seems to have accepted that this prevents him from assuming the position of Prime Minister but has just executed what he considers a brilliant move by nominating an unknown Muslim woman instead.............whose name. however, has just been rejected by the President on what are thought to be security grounds .(he husband is a pro-Assad Syrian activist).... Talk about being too clever by half........this is just playing with the country!!

In May 2016
the local elections put this totally corrupt party back into power in most of
the country’s urban centres. Early December saw less than a 40% turnout in the
parliamentary elections but the PSD took almost half of the vote and the
majority of the seats…..They now control almost everything in Romania except
the Presidency and the judiciary and are already making vague threats against
both……

About Me

Can be contacted at bakuron2003@yahoo.co.uk
Political refugee from Thatcher's Britain (or rather Scotland) who has been on the move since 1991. First in central Europe - then from 1999 Central Asia and Caucasus. Working on EU projects - related to building capacity of local and central government. Home base is an old house in the Carpathian mountains and Sofia

about the blog

Writing in my field is done by academics - and gives little help to individuals who are struggling to survive in or change public bureaucracies. Or else it is propoganda drafted by consultants and officials trying to talk up their reforms. And most of it covers work at a national level - whereas most of the worthwhile effort is at a more local level. The restless search for the new dishonours the work we have done in the past. As Zeldin once said - "To have a new vision of the future it is first necessary to have new vision of the past".I therefore started this blog to try to make sense of the organisational endeavours I've been involved in; to see if there are any lessons which can be passed on; to restore a bit of institutional memory and social history - particularly in the endeavour of what used to be known as "social justice". My generation believed that political activity could improve things - that belief is now dead and that cynicism threatens civilisationI also read a lot and wanted to pass on the results of this to those who have neither the time or inclination -as well as my love of painting, particularly the realist 20th century schools of Bulgaria and Belgium.A final motive for the blog is more complicated - and has to do with life and family. Why are we here? What have we done with our life? What is important to us? Not just professional knowledge - but what used to be known, rather sexistically, as "wine, women and song" - for me now in the autumn of my life as wine, books and art....

quotes

“I will act as if what I do makes a difference”
William James 1890.

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas"
JM Keynes (1935)

"We've spent half a century arguing over management methods. If there are solutions to our confusions over government, they lie in democratic not management processes"
JR Saul (1992)

"There are four sorts of worthwhile learning - learning about · oneself
· learning about things
· learning how others see us
· learning how we see others"
E. Schumacher (author of "Small is Beautiful" (1973) and Guide for the Perplexed (1977))

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell, 1950

Followers

der arme Dichter (Carl Spitzweg)

my alter ego

the other site

In 2008 I set up a website in the (vain) hope of developing a dialogue around issues of public administration reform - particularly in transition countries where I have been living and working for the past 26 years. The site is www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform and contains the major papers I have written over the years about my attempts to reform various public organisations in the various roles which I've had - politician; academic/trainer; consultant.